Soon you will bid goodbye to unused iOS apps

by
Jay Jay4/7/2016 1:27:24 PM

4/7/2016 1:27:24 PM

You will soon be able to hide native iOS apps in your iPhone which you never used and make space for some that you actually will!

Apple has begun work towards making native apps on iOS hideable in the future by adding two new keys in iTunes metadata, not long after it offered a similar setting to developers via a beta version of iOS 9.3.

The two new keys included in the metadata are named “isFirstParty" and “isFirstPartyHideableApp” and were discovered by AppAdvice. However, these keys also come with certain values that suggest that you may not be able to delete them or even hide some of them. This reflects Tim Cook's comments to Buzzfeed where he explained why all native iOS apps cannot be manually removed.

“There are some apps that are linked to something else on the iPhone. If they were to be removed they might cause issues elsewhere on the phone. There are other apps that aren’t like that. So over time, I think with the ones that aren’t like that, we’ll figure out a way [for you to remove them]. … It’s not that we want to suck up your real estate; we’re not motivated to do that. We want you to be happy. So I recognize that some people want to do this, and it’s something we’re looking at,” he had said.

Back in January, a Reddit user discovered a new feature in the beta version of iOS 9.3 which allowed developers to delete native iOS apps that featured permanently on iOS device displays. These apps included Stocks, Tips, Find Friends and iBooks which are among the lesser-used native iOS apps.

To be able to get such an option, you'll need to first be part of Apple's Developer Programme which costs £79! Once you do that, you'll need to edit the Configurator programme to make the option available to you. The rights to edit the Configurator programme is only available to businesses and other organizations who need customised devices to suit their work.

Since Apple hasn't rolled out the feature publicly, we are expecting it to be to be rolled out with iOS 10 at Apple's next Worldwide Developer Conference which is scheduled to take place in June. The conference may also involve the launch of Siri for Mac devices with the next OS X update. In Macs, Siri will neither appear as a swipe menu nor as a full screen view like in iPhones and iPads, but will appear as an icon in the top right corner of the Mac's menu bar.